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DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED IN" 



HOLLIS STREET CHURCH, 



BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 2, 1827: 



OCCASIONED 



HORACE HOLLEY LL.D, 

LATE PRESIDENT OF TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY. 



BY JOHN PIERPONT, 

MINISTER OF HOLLIS STREET CHURCH. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



BOSTON, 

FROM THE PRESS OF THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. 



Stephen Foster, Printer. 

1827. 






l ^£ 



..tv^ 






DISCOURSE. 



John V. 35. 

HE WAS A BURNING AND A SHINING LIGHT; AND YE WERE WILLING, 
FOR A SEASON, TO REJOICE IN HIS LIGHT. 

The relation of minister and people, that, for 
almost ten years, subsisted between the late Presi- 
dent Holley and the christian community that come 
up to this house to worship, has been, indeed, for 
many years, dissolved — as that relation ought always 
to be dissolved, when death does not come in to 
break it up — by the mutual consent and indepen- 
dent agreement of the parties. But it is forbidden 
by the constitution of our moral nature, as it is 
inconsistent with our social and religious affections, 
that we should be indifferent to the weal or the wo 
of one who has, for years, devoted himself to the in- 
teresting offices of the christian ministry, who has 
given us religious instruction, and led us in our 
public devotions, even though the tie has been 
unloosed that once bound us together. It is for- 
bidden that we should look upon him as a stranger 



while he lives, or pass by his memory, or his re- 
mains, as we would those of a stranger, when he 
is dead. The mournful intelligence has reached 
us that the man who once stood up in this place, 
in the sight of a great portion of this congregation, 
as the servant of Jesus Christ and as an expositor 
of his gospel of truth, and peace, and hope, and 
life, is dead. In the language of an apostle I may 
say, * And now behold, I know that ye all, among 
whom he went, preaching the kingdom of God, 
shall see his face no more.' * 

We have come together to bring back his image 
to our minds ; to ask of faithful memory and kind 
affection, that they would unite their efforts for a 
few moments, and retrace the noble and beautiful 
picture that has already begun to fade, but which 
we would not lose. We have come to speak as 
we may of him who, from this place, once spoke 
so well of the value and the power of a rational 
faith, and of that moral integrity, and that bold and 
uncompromising mental independence, which bring 
the true lovers of Religious Truth to her abode and 
her embrace. We may not indeed speak worthily, 
we may not speak wisely ; but honestly we may 
and will speak. Even if the pulpit which the de- 
ceased once adorned were now venal, had it lost 
its honesty when it lost its ornament, he left no 
legacy to purchase praise ; and, as flattery cannot 
' soothe the dull cold ear of Death,' so neither can 

* Acts xx. 25. 



the lips of the dead, however eloquent they may 
once have been, repay in kind a heartless and a 
worthless panegyric from the lips of the living. 

Horace Holley, the fourth minister of this 
church, and first President of Transylvania Univer- 
sity after its reorganization in 1818, was born in 
Salisbury, Connecticut, in February, 1781. He was 
the son of Luther Holley, and was one of six broth- 
ers, to all of whom the Creative Spirit, both physi- 
cally and intellectually, had imparted largely of his 
best gifts. He was graduated at Yale College, 1 803, 
with one of the highest honors of that institution, 
at that time under the presidency of Dr Dwight. 
Immediately after leaving college Mr Holley en- 
tered upon the study of the Law, with Peter W. 
Radcliff Esq. a highly reputable lawyer, of New 
York ; with whom, however, he did not remain 
many months before he gave up his flattering pros- 
pects of distinction at the bar, and, returning to 
New Haven in 1804, entered upon his theological 
studies with President Dwight, by whose counsels 
he was probably not a little influenced, in deter- 
mining to change his professional course. Early 
in the year 1806, soon after he had completed his 
course of theological studies preparatory to the 
christian ministry, he was ordained as pastor of the 
parish of Greenfield Hill, in Fairfield County, Con- 
necticut; the place which Dr Dwight had held 
previous to his acceptance of the presidency at 



New Haven. After a short ministry there, he was 
regularly dismissed from his charge at Greenfield, 
by a Consociation of ministers, meeting at that 
place on the thirteenth of September, 1808, from 
which ecclesiastical body Mr Holley received a 
certificate of his regular dismission, in which ' they 
declare their entire approbation of his ministerial 
character, and recommend him to the grace of 
God and the churches as a gospel minister.' * 

On the eighth of the following March, 1809, Mr 
Holley was installed pastor of this church ; in which 
office he continued til] 1818. Early this year, he 
received an invitation from the Trustees of Tran- 
sylvania University, at Lexington, Kentucky, to 
become the President of that institution, which, 
having existed in a feeble and languishing state for 
more than thirty years, the friends of science in the 
West had made an effort to awaken and call forth 
from the dust. On receiving this invitation Mr 
Holley visited Lexington for the purpose of gain- 
ing, from personal observation, that knowledge 
which he deemed necessary as the basis of an en- 
lightened decision of the question then before him ; 
and while there, under the immediate pressure of 
flattering representations and sanguine hopes, he 
so far departed from the counsels and affectionate 
intreaties of his personal friends in this neighbour- 
hood, as to give an answer accepting the invitation 

* See certificate referred to, in the Records of Hollis Street Church, p. 263. 



of the Trustees, before his return to the field of his 
past labors. 

On the twentyfourth of August, 1818, the com- 
municants and the noncommunicants of this church, 
by their joint act, voted unanimously, ' that their 
pastor, the Rev. Horace Holley, be, at his request, 
dismissed from this church, and that his pastoral 
relation be dissolved ; ' and on the afternoon of the 
first Sunday of October following, he bade adieu to 
his people from this place ; and not to his people 
alone, but to a throng of assembled citizens, which 
no one who formed a part of it, will soon forget. 
Since that time, with the exception of a few days 
during a visit to this place in the summer of 1822, 
we have neither seen his face, nor heard his voice 
in our churches. He gave himself, with little re- 
mission, to the laborious and most trying duties of 
his station, until the beginning of the present year ; 
when, as it would seem from all the evidence that is 
before us, after more than eight years of honorable 
toil, attended by too little of honorable support, 
and followed by too little of honorable reward, he 
resigned his office, and, with his wife and son — his 
daughter having been married in Kentucky — went 
down to New Orleans in the month of March, with 
a view of embarking for Europe with some young 
gentlemen, of whom he was to have the instruction 
and the care for several years. His hopes, how- 
ever, from this quarter, were blasted, and that ex- 
pedition was given over. Another door of useful 



8 

and honorable employment for his splendid talents, 
was opened to his hopes in the immediate vicinity 
of New Orleans ; before entering which, however, 
he determined to spend two or three months, with 
his little family, in the Northern States. 

He embarked for New York on the twentysecond 
of July last. But he had remained too long on the 
fertile, but too fatal banks of the Mississippi. The 
plague that falls upon so many of the children of 
New England — the pestilence that walketh on those 
shores in darkness, and wasteth on those waters at 
noonday — had marked our friend for its victim. 
When but a few days at sea, the yellow fever 
showed itself on board. One after another fell be- 
fore the destroyer. It was a scene of suffering 
and of horrible fear. So intense was the heat, that 
the deck was the couch of the sick and the well 
alike. By night, as well as by day, a canvass sheet 
alone shielded them from sun and storm. She who 
for so many years was with you, my brethren, in 
your daily walks, and your weekly worship, was 
the only one of her sex on board. She was her- 
self wasting and withering under the dreadful mal- 
ady. One fellow sufferer breathed his last at her 
side, in the dead of night, in the midst of a thunder 
tempest. He who had watched over her with a 
husband's love, and, with a father's fears, had trem- 
bled for his son, felt at last the blow upon his own 
brain. His reason reeled under the shock. His 
noble form fell down, when that fell down which 



was its glory. The mighty, in form and in mind, 
wrestled strenuously, wrestled madly, with Death : 
but what is the strength of man, when wrestling 
with that dread Angel of the Lord ! On the morn- 
ing of the thirtyfirst our friend died ; and at eve- 
ning, the same day, his remains were let down into 
the deep. 

The memory of many who hear me, will do not 
a little towards filling up a part, at least, of the 
outline which I have thus attempted to trace, ac- 
cording to the knowledge which I have been able 
to gain, of the life of the late President Holley. 
My own opportunities of personal acquaintance 
with him have ever been more limited than, had I 
been free to choose, my choice would have made 
them. I knew him in college ; but our classes, 
our acquaintances, and our associations were so 
different that I may almost say that I had no per- 
sonal acquaintance with him, until his return to 
New Haven to enter upon his theological studies. 
After that time I saw somewhat more of him than 
I had done, until the end of the collegiate year 
after he received the honors of the College. From 
that period I saw him no more until I saw him 
standing where I now stand. Between the years 
1811 and 1818, it was my good fortune to hear 
him, once or twice a year, in his own pulpit, and 
occasionally in others ; to be recognized by him as 
an acquaintance, and more than once to be the 
object of his courteous notice and hospitable atten- 
2 



10 

tions at his own house. I hope that I may be par- 
doned in this departure from the immediate and 
exclusive subject of this discourse ; for I allow my- 
self in it as well for the sake of gratefully and pub- 
licly acknowledging the kindness on his part, which 
marked all of the limited intercourse that I was 
permitted to have with him while he lived, as 
for the sake of presenting to my hearers a sim- 
ple, but, I trust, a sufficient apology for not filling 
out, in a manner more worthy of its subject, the 
portrait which ought to be drawn and preserved of 
his social, intellectual, moral, and religious charac- 
ter. In performing this part of the melancholy 
duty in which I am engaged, I feel a diffidence by 
which I am not a little embarrassed and oppressed. 
But I have this to console and encourage me ; the 
consideration, that, in respect to his qualities and 
his character as a christian minister, my want of 
knowledge, touching peculiar and distinctive points, 
will be abundantly supplied by the knowledge, the 
thorough, practical knowledge, of many who hear 
me ; and that, in respect to the fitness of our friend 
for the station to which he was called when he 
relinquished the ministerial office, and in respect 
to his faithfulness to the duties of that new station, 
we have the testimony of gentlemen, who for years 
were associated with him in those duties, who 
could not but know whether he was competent 
and faithful to them, and whose testimony, as they 
have given it to the world, is unequivocal and full, 



11 

and as honorable to them, as it is to the distin- 
guished subject of it. 

Of the person of Mr Holley little need be said. 
It has been already remarked, that, physically as 
well as intellectually, the Creative Spirit had im- 
parted to him largely of his best gifts ; the gifts of 
personal beauty, grace, health, and strength. By 
some it may be thought that these things, when we 
are speaking of a man, and that in a solemn assem- 
bly, and in a religious service, are unworthy of our 
notice. From such I differ ; believing that the gifts 
of personal beauty, and strength, and grace, which 
it is worthy of the wisdom of God to produce and 
bestow, it is worthy of the highest of his creatures 
to recognize and admire. Yet, the manly form, 
the visage bestowed by Heaven on man to be lifted 
upwards to itself, the keen and beaming eye, the 
lofty and polished forehead that swells above it, as 

' The dome of thought, the palace of the soul,' 

are indeed to be regarded as secondary to the 
thought that dwells beneath that dome, the soul 
that is enthroned in that palace. 

It is principally and emphatically as an intellect- 
ual man that the friends of Mr Holley would choose 
to remember him, and that he would choose to be 
remembered by them. It was mind, the appre- 
hending, combining, reasoning faculty; it was mind, 
in the gift of which the dominion was given to man 
over brute beasts, and in the greater powers of 



12 

which, there is given to one man dominion over 
another ; it was this which gave to the subject of 
the present discourse all the preeminence over oth- 
ers which he was ambitious to secure in life, and 
for which he would be ambitious to be remembered 
after death. 

And, were I called upon to state in what particu- 
lars the mind of Holley had the advantage, when 
compared with most of even the leading minds of 
his age, I should say, in promptness, and in power ; 
promptness in apprehending, in comparing, in com- 
bining, in following out another's train of reasoning, 
or in tracing out a course for himself; promptness 
in summoning up around him, to wait his bidding, 
the forces by which, in polemical or metaphysical 
warfare, his own citadel was to be defended, or 
the entrenched fortress of his adversary stormed ; 
promptness, with which he would bring hypothe- 
sis, analogy, and stubborn fact, into his service, 
and marshal and display them ; and power, by 
which, when he had gathered all his forces around 
him, and glanced his keen eye along the array, he 
would move them on towards one point, and wield 
them as with one effort, and throw all their mass 
upon the one point selected for assault. Nor was 
the promptness of our friend less conspicuous in 
acquiring knowledge, from books and from its other 
sources, than it was in giving it a direct applica- 
tion when acquired. By what must have appeared 
to most men as a cursory glance over the leaves of 



13 

a book, he would come into a more thorough and 
practical possession of its contents, than many oth- 
ers by a repeated and diligent reading ; and what 
he was thus prompt to acquire, he was at all times 
equally prompt to impart, in public and in private, 
in the great assembly, and in social circles ; — to 
impart even with a readiness and a copiousness 
which sometimes gave occasion to his friends to 
complain of a redundance, while in his company, 
rather than of a dearth. 

The accomplishment by which Holley was espe- 
cially distinguished, and in respect to which he 
stood unquestionably the first, I do not say in his 
profession merely, but in any profession, in the 
present age and in our own country ; an accom- 
plishment implying literary wealth and intellectual 
power, was extemporaneous, popular eloquence. 
Other scholars may have written more elegantly 
than he ; other orators may, by patiently holding 
communion with the mighty dead, in the solitude 
of the library and by the midnight lamp, have 
brought out a discourse, which, tried by the canons 
of criticism, and given to the world from the press, 
might be transmitted through a longer series of 
ages, and be more admired for its 'lucid order,' 
and for the finished elegance of its composition. 
But if I am asked where is, or where or when there 
has been, the man, in this country, who, at a single 
hour's notice, would come into a great assembly 
more promptly, and sooner charm the multitude to 



14 

silence, or chain them longer to their seats, and 
move them more absolutely at his will, and make 
them more entirely his own, by the power of his 
eloquence, I must answer, that I do not know. An 
elegant form, a graceful action, a countenance 
beaming at once with the expression of earnestness 
and intelligence, an elocution ready and perfectly 
distinct, though sometimes rapid and always ener- 
getic, a manner graceful and full of dignity ; these 
natural advantages, superadded to his intellectual 
powers, enabled him to become what, by discipline 
and culture, he made himself, probably the most 
accomplished and efficient pulpit orator that our 
country has produced. 

To such as may consider this as too high praise 
I would remark, that that is the most efficient ora- 
tory which, in the greatest degree, produces the 
effects of oratory. I would refer to Mr Holley's 
oration at Plymouth, on the anniversary of the 
landing of the Fathers of New England there ; to 
his oration before the Washington Benevolent So- 
ciety ; to his sermon before the Ancient and Hon- 
orable Artillery Company ; and to his discourse 
on the anniversary of the Boston Female Asylum. 
Not a few who hear me now, heard him on some 
one, and probably there are those present who heard 
him on all, of these occasions. To such I would 
propose the question, as matter of sober, practical 
reality, not of partial, or extravagant eulogium, 
Where, and when, and by whom, have you seen 



15 

the effects of popular eloquence more obviously 
and triumphantly exhibited ? have you seen greater 
crowds drawn together, and kept together ? feelings 
more highly excited? the sentiments of charity, 
patriotism, philanthropy more widely wakened ? the 
breathing, but noiseless multitude more strongly 
seized upon, and bound, and led away whitherso- 
ever the speaker would ? You heard him before 
the Artillery Company. I do not, by reminding you 
of his triumph on that occasion, say that I ap- 
prove of the noisy demonstration of excited and 
gratified feeling, the outright applause, which, then, 
for the first and last time in New England, broke 
out in the house of God, and echoed from its walls. 
In ancient times, indeed, and in warmer latitudes, 
applause in christian churches, and even acclama- 
tions were not infrequent ; the delight of the hear- 
ers was expressed by clapping the hands, and stamp- 
ing with the feet, and crying out < Orthodox ! ' * 
But for many ages, and throughout Christendom, 
all acclamations and applause have been deemed 
inconsistent with the due decorum of a christian 
assembly, engaged in a religious service. And, 
when we consider that this custom of applauding a 
pulpit orator obtained principally, even in ancient 
times, in the warm climes of the East — in Rome, 
and Africa, and Constantinople — and under the 
preaching of the great masters of pulpit eloquence— 

* See Lardner's Works, Vol. I. p. 621, 622. Ed. Encycl. Art. ' Acclamation.' 



16 

Augustine, and Jerome, and Chrysostom ; and when 
we consider moreover that 

* The cold in clime are cold in blood,' 

I know not what it may prove to others to be told, 
or to see, that in our cold regions, where a fervid 
eloquence is frowned upon, under the very shadow 
of an iceberg that chills the young orator's veins as 
he looks up to it as ' the hill from whence cometh 
his help,' and that gives forth its light as coldly 
though as clearly as the moon gives down hers ; I 
know not what it may prove to others to be told 
that, under such circumstances, a man had so seized 
upon and spehVbound a thronged church as to make 
the whole multitude so far forget the occasion, the 
place, the coldness of the rhetorical atmosphere, so 
far to forget the decorums of the age, and, what is 
more, so far to forget the fashion, as to break in 
upon his discourse by outright applause ; but to me, 
it proves that that man had risen above all others 
of his country and his age, as an accomplished and 
efficient orator. 

I speak to those who have heard him of whom I 
speak. You have heard him, my friends, you have 
felt him. More than once he had many of you in his 
power, while he lived. I ask no more than that you 
should do justice to that power now that he is dead. 
The chain is broken that often bound you. But you 
will not be so unjust as to deny, you will not be so 
ungenerous as to forget, that it did bind you once, 



17 

although his absence has long left it hanging loosely 
upon you, and it is now entirely broken by his death. 

Of the variety of Mr Holley's attainments, and 
of the versatility of his powers, many who hear me 
are the witnesses. Scarcely any department of 
the sciences passed altogether without his notice. 
Wherever he happened to be thrown, into whatever 
region, of poetry, or of romance, of history, or of 
physical science, of politics, or of the fine arts — 
and into all of these regions he was sometimes led, 
in his extensive ranges among the various circles in 
which he moved — he never appeared as a stranger. 
He seemed to have been there before, and to have 
prepared himself to give an account of his travels. 
It was probably even one of the weak points of his 
character, that he was ambitious of doing so many 
things better than another could do them. A weak 
point, I say, because it implied that he either did 
not know, or did not consider, that, upon one of 
the most thoroughly established principles of our 
intellectual nature, it is impossible for the same mind 
to be first, at the same time, in great things and in 
small ; that ' to be sublimely great, and elegantly 
little ' is incompatible ; that if a man will have the 
sublimity and dignity of Milton, he must not hope 
to attain the polish and epigrammatic sententious- 
ness of Pope ; and that if he is already in possession 
of Bacon's depth and original strength, he must 
not covet the elegance and grace of Addison. 

Yet, by the variety of his attainments, our de- 
ceased friend was especially well qualified for the 
3 



18 

station for which he left this city. Of his qualifi- 
cations for the presidency of Transylvania Univer- 
sity, as well as of his efficiency and fidelity in that 
high office, having, thus far, spoken of those things 
of which my hearers are his witnesses, it is due to 
him, as it must be gratifying to his friends here, to 
let those testify, who knew him well as the head of 
that literary institution, who were associated with 
him in the labors of instruction, and who have felt 
themselves called upon, in justice to a man who had 
been the subject of base and broad-mouthed slan- 
der, to give their testimony to the world. This 
was done, more than two years ago, in a pamphlet 
to which Professors Barry, Bledsoe, Dudley, and 
Caldwell, of Transylvania University, gave their 
names, and which they sent abroad, to enlighten, and 
thus to disabuse, the Western community, in regard 
to the subject of this discourse. The testimony of 
these gentlemen, I now give you. — 

' To say that as a gentleman of polished manners, 
unimpeachable morals, correct and elevated senti- 
ments, steady friendships, active and industrious 
habits, and social qualities peculiarly attractive, the 
example of the President, far from being dangerous 
to the youth that have intercourse with him, is 
worthy of their imitation, is but to assert that which 
all who know him intimately, are ready to confirm. If 
his deportment is free from the austerity of the re- 
cluse, and the formality of the pedant, it is equally 
so from every thing that can subject him to merited 
reproach. 



19 

* Of his qualifications as an executive officer, and 
his capability to teach the branches of science ap- 
pertaining to his province, it would be superfluous 
to speak. In these respects, his enemies themselves 
have never denied his peculiar preeminence. Nor 
is he less distinguished by his devotedness to his 
duties, than his ability to perform them. The love 
of instruction is his ruling passion. In evidence of 
this, it may be safely affirmed that his academical 
labors more than double those of the President of 
any other similar institution in the United States. 

' By individuals who have never attended to the 
subject, this assertion may appear hyperbolical, per- 
haps unfounded. But let such be assured that, on a 
fair and dispassionate inquiry, they will find it within 
the limits of sober truth. Instead, therefore, of 
confiding in the statements here presented, they are 
earnestly invited to institute such an inquiry, and 
judge for themselves. This is the form of com- 
parison and trial, which, in all cases, the President 
and his friends are solicitous to attain. From this 
they will neither shrink under a consciousness of 
deficiency or fault, nor utter a complaint of it, be 
the issue what it may.' 

* * * * 

1 Let the present controversy eventuate as it may, 
in relation to the fortunes of the President, in the 
station which he occupies, the period of his direc- 
tion of the affairs of the University will be always 
referred to as the fairest era of reform and improve- 



20 

ment in its general administration, nor can an in- 
stitution be found, either in Europe or America, 
that has, in so short a time, been so signally and 
extensively benefited by the labors of an individual, 
as Transylvania has by his, within the last six years. 
If these assertions are unfounded, they are suscep- 
tible of refutation, and ought to be refuted. If true, 
his enemies and persecutors must consent to be re- 
garded as the enemies of the West, if they do not 
silence them. On this ground his friends will fear- 
lessly hazard the issue of the controversy. Let 
time determine whether his accusers will accept the 

challenge.' 

* * * # 

' When invited to the superintendence of its in- 
terests and destinies, the President found the insti- 
tution destitute of arrangements for instruction in 
the professions of medicine and law. To these 
points his vigilant attention was early directed. 
Nor was it bestowed on them feebly or without 
effect. The wisdom of his measures, and the vigor 
and perseverance of his exertions, in the erection 
of these two additional departments, are well known 
and remembered by the citizens of Lexington. The 
issue is now witnessed in the existence and flourish- 
ing condition of a school of medicine and a school 
of law, which are already, in no ordinary degree, 
useful and honorable to the States of the West, and 
which, under an energetic and skilful administration, 
cannot fail to improve with the progress of time.' 



21 

* But his services in relation to the department of 
law, have not been confined to his agency in its 
establishment. During the absence of one of the 
Professors, he voluntarily entered upon the duties of 
his chair, and distinguished himself not a little in 
the capacity of a teacher. In the performance of 
these accumulated and arduous labors, he delivered 
nearly two full courses of lectures on civil and na- 
tional law, for one of which he refused to accept 
compensation. But for the versatility of his talents, 
the extent and diversity of his attainments, and his 
entire devotion to the instruction of his pupils, the 
department, on these occasions, would have been 
defective in its resources, and must have suffered in 
its reputation by the necessary suspension of a part 
of its operations. 

* Nor does this amount to a full representation 
of his exertions in behalf of the department of law. 
Even before he had effected the organization of 
that department, and as a measure preparatory to 
it, he delivered, in person, two courses of instruction 
on Blackstone's Commentaries, and instead of re- 
taining the fees himself, which both justice and 
usage authorized him to do, added them to the 
common funds of the institution : — a procedure 
which furnishes something not only less than a 
proof of the mercenary spirit of which his enemies 
have accused him, but the very reverse of it.' * 

* See an address ' To the Public,' in relation to Transylvania University, 
published in Lexington, Kentucky, probably in 1824, and signed by W. T. 



22 

A mercenary spirit ! — Friends of the deceased ! 
you have heard what his friends at the West have 
said to defend him against the slanders of his foes ; 
and here we learn one of the accusations that they 
brought against him. He was, forsooth, of a mer- 
cenary spirit ! On the catalogue of his faults — and 
that he had many faults, they who knew him best, 
and loved him best, have never yet denied- — I be- 
lieve that those who loved him least, in this neigh- 
bourhood, never thought of setting down a merce- 
nary spirit ; and if the rest of the charges, brought 
against him at the West, were as groundless as 
those of you who knew him, know that this must 
have been, his friends will have little reason to 
speak guardedly in his praise, or to tremble for his 
fame. 

I have just said that our friend had faults. He 
had. To say that he had not, would be to pollute 
the place that he once adorned. It would be to 
insult your understandings, and to presume against 
your knowledge of him and of mankind ; nay, it 
would be to outrage the cherished memory of the 
dead himself. He knew that he had faults, and 
none could be more prompt to point them out to 
him, than he was himself to acknowledge them. 
It was one of the best traits in his character that 
he did not seek to hide them. Had he been more 

Barry LL.D. late Professor of Civil Law, Jesse Bledsoe LL. D. Professor of 
Common and Statute Law, B. W. Dudley M. D. Professor of Anatomy and 
Surgery, and Ch. Caldwell M. D. Professor of the Institutes of Medicine 
and Clinical Practice, pp. 5 — 10, ct alibi. 



23 

of a hypocrite, he might have lived with a better 
reputation in the sight of the saints ; but he would 
have died with a worse character in the eye of his 
Judge. No, the deceased was not perfect; and 
let him who is, cast the first stone at his memory 
because he was not. This is not the place to lay 
open his faults, whatever they may have been. 
This is not the time to swell that, which, in the eyes 
of some, may have appeared, and may still appear, 
the mountain of his sins, by heaping up apologies 
upon it. It seems to me, however, that we do owe 
it to ourselves, and to him, and, what is of still 
greater concern, to the truth, to say, that almost 
1 all his failings leaned to virtue's side,' in that they 
sprung, almost entirely, out of this one defect ; he 
had too good an opinion of mankind. As he never 
sought to entangle another in his talk, he did not 
suspect that there could be any one seeking to en- 
tangle him ; to represent that which was said in 
the unguarded intercourse of the social circle, as 
something seriously proposed in a grave discourse ; 
or to pervert that which might be true in one sense, 
and which a friend would understand as he meant 
it, into the expression of something shocking to the 
moral sense, and dishonorable to the christian pro- 
fession, to say nothing of the ministerial character. 
Yet there are always such men in the world, and 
they who think of the world no better than it is, 
know there are, and do what they may to guard 
against them. There are still those in the world, 



24 

as there were long ago, who, in a trial which is 
one of life or death to a religious teacher's charac- 
ter, will promptly testify, ' This fellow said I am 
able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it 
in three days,' and who yet will not add, by way 
of explanation, ' But he spake of the temple of 
his body.' * To such, our friend, in the simplicity 
of his own heart, often exposed himself. It was 
a fault in him that he exposed himself so much. 

Yet we may be almost tempted to forgive this 
fault, of laying himself too freely open to his foes, 
when we consider that it was so nearly related to 
the frankness in which he threw open the doors of 
his heart to his friends ; and to that magnanimity, 
that truly christian magnanimity, which prompted 
him to bless them who cursed him, and to pray for 
those who despitefully used, and, as far as the 
tongue can persecute, persecuted him ; that mag- 
nanimity in which he opened the doors of this pulpit 
to the gentleman who was afterwards the first pas- 
tor of Park Street Church, not even hoping ' to 
receive as much again ' in having the doors of that 
pulpit opened to him in return ; which led him to lay 
upon the tomb of the late President of Yale Col- 
lege, a tribute of grateful remembrance, in an elo- 
quent eulogium upon that distinguished divine — 
which many now present heard — long after a differ- 
ence in their religious opinions had risen up, as a 
wall of partition between the venerable teacher and 

* Matthew xxvi. 61. John ii. 21. 



25 

his favorite pupil ; and which, after his removal to 
the West, in his zeal for the promotion of letters 
wherever it could be effected, prompted him to 
become the active advocate of the colleges of Dan- 
ville and Bowling Green, in Kentucky, although 
they were intended to be the rivals of Transylvania 
University, and successfully to exert his influence 
with his friends to procure for them, at an impor- 
tant and threatening crisis, public patronage, and a 
grant of money from the legislature of that com- 
monwealth. * How far this last act, especially, of 
courtesy and magnanimity ought to be reciproca- 
ted, an enlightened and magnanimous community 
can judge. How far it will be, the rigid pen of the 
historian will record. 

Of the theological sentiments or opinions of Mr 
Holley, it is proper that something, but it is not 
proper that much, should be said. While he stood 
in this place, in the office of an expositor of the 
christian doctrine, and a preacher of righteousness, 
he laid his opinions and the grounds of them be- 
fore his people, freely and boldly. We might, 
indeed, have safely averred that a want of freedom 
and boldness in this department of his duty would 
never be laid to his charge, were it not that we 
have already seen that he has been charged with 
what we should have as little anticipated from his 
adversaries, a mercenary spirit. The record of 

* See the pamphlet above referred to, p. 15. 

4 



26 

what his opinions were, must now be found, princi- 
pally, in the memory and the convictions of his 
people ; that of his religious feelings, in the impres- 
sions which he made upon their hearts. It is not 
ours to inquire now, whether in his searchings after 
truth, he always or never found it. It is enough 
for us to believe that he loved truth ardently, and 
sought it earnestly. If any of his fellow Christians 
say that, in his belief, he departed widely from them, 
they will do well to remember that they have de- 
parted just as widely from him ; and that it is not 
theirs, nor his, but God's, to determine which sought 
for the treasures of his truth most faithfully, and 
which at last sought most successfully, he or they. 
He has gone now, where, we believe, other volumes 
of the divine counsels have had their seals broken for 
his instruction ; where other revelations of the grace 
and the glory of the Deity have been made to him ; 
and where that truth, at whose altar he waited and 
worshipped here, is seen no longer as in a glass, 
dimly, but face to face. 

It will be regretted by the friends of President 
Holley, as it is unfortunate for his fame as an ora- 
tor, that he has given so few of his productions to 
the press. With the exception of an article in the 
Cambridge Repository, — a Review of Ely's Contrast 
of Hopkinsianism and Calvinism, published in 1813, 
without his name, — and a Eulogy on James Morri- 
son, a liberal benefactor of Transylvania Univer- 
sity, printed with his name in 1 823, — with the last of 



27 

which only would his character as a pulpit orator 
be in the least degree connected — I know of nothing 
on which his reputation, in this leading trait of his 
character, can rest, when his contemporaries shall 
all have passed away. In this respect, we may 
apply to him his own remark of the celebrated 
Whitefield, that he has left his fame to rest upon 
the record of his personal eloquence.* 

But what of that ! You yourselves, my friends, are 
witnesses that all that eloquence can give to its pos- 
sessor in the present life, was given to him, and he 
enjoyed it. The concourse, gathered and waiting 
where he is to be heard ; the crowd, hushed to si- 
lence as he rises ; the excitement of such a moment ; 
the heart beating strong and high ; the attention and 
wakening sympathy of the mass, as it begins to warm 
with the kindlings of his spirit ; the consciousness of 
power, of a high trust used with a high aim ; the 
feeling that his convictions are becoming the con- 
victions of his hearers, and his resolves their re- 
solves ; the applause of the wise and good ; the 
gratitude of those on whose heads his eloquence 
brings down blessings ; and, after that, the joyous 
1 well done ! ' which the heart speaketh ; these are 
things which the benevolent ordinances of the Most 
High have assigned for the enjoyment of the chris- 
tian orator, even while he lives ; nay, in these things 
is his life ; and in regard to these things, I have a 

* See Cambridge Theol. Repository, Vol. iii. p. 352. 



28 

cloud of witnesses before me, that our deceased 
friend, even while he lived, was alike exempted from 
the power of the press and of posterity ; and he 
might truly say, 

These joys are on my soul impressed, 

' And, come what will, I have been blessed.' 

You have seen him, my friends, in those seasons 
of his triumph. You must have entered into his 
feelings, and sympathized in his joys. If the mem- 
ory of them still abides with him, and if the still 
purer joys are his that, in the heavenly world, spring 
from the consciousness of God devoutly loved, and 
of man faithfully served ; and if the joys are his 
that gush forth anew, for the refreshment of his 
spirit, from still higher exercises of powers yet more 
ennobled, and of affections still more sanctified, 
may he not well pass by, as a worthless thing, the 
pleasure that he might now derive from the know- 
ledge that his name should live and be renowned in 
a world like this! 

You have seen him, you have felt him, when he 
has stood before you in the glory of his intellectual 
strength, in the beauty of his manhood, in the noon 
of his life ; and, O how changed ! we have seen 
him in the darkness of his dying hour. Of the 
throngs that have gathered around him to be in- 
structed or delighted by his voice, and that even 
now come together where his name is to be named, 
not one was near him to hear the last faint whisper 
from his lips ; not one to kneel in the night watches, 



29 

as he had knelt by the death-bed of others, and 
commend his spirit to the God who gave it. It 
was in darkness that he lay ; darkness of the skies 
and of the mind. It was upon the lone waters that 
he died. Is not thus to die, to taste the bitterness 
of death ? 

And yet, let us not murmur at the dispensations 
of the Lord, nor complain of his appointments for 
our friend. If that was the * inevitable hour, ' and 
the path of his glory must then lead him to a grave, 
were not the circumstances of his death, in sublime 
harmony with the splendid character of his career ! 
His life had been a life of excitement. Why should 
not such be the character of his death ? Why 
should a spirit, that rejoiced, as his did, to see the 
elements of the moral world constantly kept in that 
agitation which gives them health and power, be 
taken calmly and quietly from among men ? Is 
there not a fitness and a sublimity in the thought 
that such a spirit should have set fire to its earthly 
dwelling when about to leave it, that it should go 
forth in darkness and tempest, ' the sea and the 
waves roaring ' beneath, and above, the lightnings 
and thunders breaking forth ? 

' He was a burning and a shining light ; and ye 
were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.' A 
voice has reached you, from beyond the mountains, 
telling you that after he had gone down, to your 
eyes, he was holding on his high course of splen- 
dor and beneficence, and that the hill-tops and 



30 

plains of the West, were, in their turn, rejoicing in 
his beams. But now, his light and his power are 
lost to the world ! Science, and Eloquence, and 
Friendship mourn his loss. Grateful and kind re- 
collections of ministerial fidelity revive, my friends, 
in your bosoms, as you gather to the place where 
he once offered your prayers to that Good Spirit 
who ruleth the raging of the sea, and sitteth serene 
upon the floods. From those floods the voice of 
the fatherless and the widow has reached your ears. 
' My Father, O my Father ! ' That cry reaches 
you, though it went up from the lips of childhood, 
amidst the roar of winds and many waters. The 
wail of the sick and solitary widow, too, comes up 
to you from the deep ; 

' Oh ! had he lived to reach his native land, 

And then expired, I would have blessed the strand. 

But, where my husband lies I may not lie ; 

I cannot come with broken heart to sigh 

O'er his loved dust, and strow with flowers his turf: 

His pillow hath no cover but the surf: 

I may not pour the soul-drop from mine eye 

Near his cold bed : — he slumbers in the wave ! 

Oh, I will love the sea, because it is his grave.' 

And shall he, my friends, go down into that grave 
forgotten ? Shall no voice be raised to do him 
honor, even in the house that, we may almost say, 
was raised by his voice ? Shall no lips speak of 
him, and plead for a kind remembrance of him, in 
the temple where his lips, touched and warmed as 
they were by the living fires of God's altar, spoke 
so well for God and his goodness, and so eloquently 



31 

pleaded the cause of truth and righteousness in the 
great congregation ? He shall not go down, thus 
unhonored, into the deep. 

Fallen model of manly beauty and strength — set 
up once, by thy Maker's hand, to grace and beautify 
the temple of our devotions, but now thrown down 
and marred by death ! 

' Thou shalt not float upon thy watery bier 
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind 
Without the meed of one melodious tear.' 

Departed spirit, that even here wast clothed with 
light and power from on high ! — we may not disre- 
gard thee in thy departure. We may not witness, 
unmoved, thy breaking away in darkness, and storm, 
and flame, and thy going up — thine own fires un- 
quenched — where Light and Power are enthroned. 

Departed leader of the disciples of Jesus ! — with 
the eye of christian faith we follow thee to brighter 
and better abodes, to the communion of the sancti- 
fied and redeemed : 

' There entertain thee all the saints above, 
In solemn troops and sweet societies.' 

Thou wouldst not have us mourn our loss, which 
is their gain and thine. We will not question the 
wisdom that hath called thee to thy reward ; but, 
as we have often bowed whilst thou wast with us 
here, we still bow with thee before the throne of 
our common Father, and say, ' Thy will be done ! ' 



